Almost all organisations choose to celebrate Ayudha puja, also known as Vijayadasami, on the tenth day of Dussehra. In some places, a couple of vainglorious staff members monopolise the arranging of the puja, to assert their importance. Generous donations are collected (in effect, demanded), plus a sizable amount is wangled from the management.
An assortment of sweets are identified and ordered, along with two varieties of savouries. Cloth bags to fill apples, oranges, bananas, betel leaves, nuts, packets of puffed rice, rice flakes, fried green dal, and palm sugar to sweeten the mixture are ordered in advance of the puja.
The Ayudha puja is an excuse for the two staff members to escape from office work. The peons are bidden noisily by them to tie festoons and steamers and to anoint the machines, tools, tackles, ledgers, furniture, doors and the pictures of gods and goddesses on the wall with sandal paste and vermillion.
The priest summoned to officiate is ready. The puja will start only after the boss arrives, so the staff wait, chatting and laughing, in a festive mood.
One such puja was about to start in the late sixties in the organisation where I worked as an accountat. Before the boss was invited, the two organisers were perturbed to notice that the foreman Sivaguru, the oldest employee, had not shown up. “He refused to come,” reported the peon dispatched twice to summon Sivaguru. The two rushed to the workshop. I knew that the foreman was not an atheist. Whenever he was free, which was not often, Sivaguru used to dip into his dog-eared prayer book. Why then did he refuse to join in the festivities?
Since the boss had to leave for Delhi after the puja, I moved silently to the workshop to see what had kept the foreman away.The two organisers were having a heated argument with him. “I will attend,” Sivaguru told them with finality, “provided, you two who worship the machines today will not break them tomorrow if you organise a wildcat strike.
You did that six months ago. Yet the management pardoned you, to buy peace. Will you take an oath before the Goddess that you will never ever break the machines, the objects of our worship?” (A wildcat strike is an unofficial strike done without formal union approval.)The two looked at each other. And then glared at Sivaguru. Without another word, they left the workshop. I learned later that the absence of the foreman was explained away to the boss by the duo as being due to his calamitous gut.